Huntsville City Schools Superintendent candidate Robyne Thompson meets with a group of leaders from the community, parent volunteers, local education nonprofits and Board of Education members at the Huntsville Chamber of Commerce Thursday afternoon. (Bob Gathany/bgathany@AL.com)

(Bob Gathany)

Clocking in at 26 minutes, the interview of Dr. Robyne Thompson, the third candidate for Huntsville's vacant superintendent job, was the shortest of the three finalists interviewed so far.

Thompson, who was suffering from a cold, kept her answers brief and direct on Thursday night, often drawing on her experiences in other school systems to illustrate her points.

She said she values two-way communication and has a liberal open-door policy when it comes to the superintendent's office.

"I don't believe the superintendent's office should be an abyss where nobody ever goes," she said. "I like to have people come into my office and talk to me, because I'm a people person."

Thompson is currently the superintendent of the suburban East Lansing Public Schools in Michigan, a district with 3,600 students, about one-seventh the size of Huntsville City Schools.

She is also the only one of the five candidates to have attended Huntsville schools. Her father was in the military, and moved the family to Huntsville in the late 1960s. While she considers herself an Army brat and said the family moved often, she lived in Huntsville the longest and still considers it home. Her father died in 1972 and is buried in Huntsville.

Thompson did not offer many details when asked about Huntsville's desegregation order or its Digital 1:1 curriculum, two of the larger, more controversial issues the district is managing. She spoke at greater length about different methods of alternative schooling and supporting special education.

When asked about Huntsville schools' areas with the greatest potential for improvement, she did not hesitate.

"One of your greatest opportunities is to get the reading scores up," said Thompson. "If you can get the reading scores up, everything else takes care of itself."

Thompson also had more to say on the subject of teacher retention. She works with Michigan State University on attracting and providing professional development for teachers, and participates in programs to improve the number of teachers of color in her district. She did lament what she sees as an erosion support for teachers among parents, the media and the community.

"We're getting beaten up by the press all the time," she said. "We're not getting respected like we used to be in my time."

At the end of the meeting, Thompson addressed allegations she said were made in local blogs about her work in East Lansing.

"The comments were, 'She closed all these schools,'" she said. "No, I didn't. They were closed when I got there."

Thompson went on to explain that her community has been divided over a school closure situation that Thompson and the district are working to resolve.

Thompson has been at East Lansing since 2014. Previously she worked as assistant superintendent in Ann Arbor Public Schools, and before that, as a principal in other Michigan districts.